Over 400,000 people visited Farnam Street last month to learn howto make better decisions, create new ideas, and avoid stupid errors. With more than 100,000 subscribers to our popular weekly digest, we've become an online intellectual hub. To learn more about we what do, start here.

Goethe’s Aphorisms

“Aphorisms are rogue ideas,” Susan Sontag wrote in her notebooks. She continues: “Aphorism is aristocratic thinking: this is all the aristocrat is willing to tell you; he thinks you should get it fast, without spelling out all the details.”

Aphorisms are not like reading a novel, argues Nassim Taleb: “reading a 200 page novel is less taxing than 20 short stories of 10 pages each. Extend to aphorisms: one should read a small number of them per sitting.”